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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 416. The Guilt of Sin
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The Guilt of Sin
(1) The sin to which Jeremiah most frequently refers, and which he obviously regards as the origin and fountain of all the rest, is idolatry.
There is no truer maxim than “Like God, like worshipper.” A nation cannot in its own character rise above the Being to whom it looks up as the ideal of greatness and goodness. It may be possible to believe in a holy God and yet live in unholiness; but it is not possible to worship Baal and the Queen of Heaven and yet remain pure and good. Therefore Jeremiah was justified in placing the worship of such deities in the forefront of his attack on contemporary morals and in treating the condition of his countrymen as hopeless as long as they failed to apply their minds to know the true God. Idolatry was openly practised in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; the very Temple had been polluted; Jerusalem had been defiled with the abominations of human sacrifices; and it would seem that these horrors had actually been defended as pleasing to Jehovah, for He has expressly to disclaim ever having given such a commandment. The people fancied that they could unite these idolatries with the worship of Jehovah, utterly failing to recognize that He was a “jealous God,” who would not tolerate a divided allegiance, no, not for a moment.
Are Hindoos more deeply devoted to their idolatry than Englishmen are to theirs? If Englishmen could abandon the worship and service of the only living idol, they would find it comparatively easy to get the Heathen to cast their dead idols to the moles and to the bats. But if the authority of the grand idol (self) were to be repudiated in favour of pure Christianity (self-sacrifice), what would become of English society? From centre to circumference, would it not break up, and be no more? If self-will were slain, English society would be found (in much the same condition as a man with his back bone taken out), not bordering on chaos, but chaos itself. It would be Genesis over again: “In the beginning English society was without form and void.” I will not bring down on me the curses of all Englishmen, by saying that a totally new beginning of this sort is desirable; and yet if one had the opportunity, it might be well to whisper into the ear of each, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, thine own self-will is the bar that threatens to separate thee from the Life of Jesus, which is the Eternal Life.1 [Note: J. Pulsford, Quiet Hours, ii. 48.]
(2) Corruption in religion had borne fruit in corruption of conduct. Faithlessness and falsehood, injustice and covetousness, violence and murder, were universal. Jerusalem was like Sodom in the days of Lot. There was no salt of righteousness in her to preserve her.
One specimen may be given. When the invading army was before the walls of Jerusalem, the king, the nobles, and the wealthy agreed to manumit their slaves of Hebrew birth. This may have been in obedience to a summons from Jeremiah, or it may have been for military reasons; but at least it was in propitiation for a transgression of which they were sensible. The law ordained that a Hebrew or Hebrewess could not be held in bondage for more than six years, but must be set free in the seventh year. This law had been allowed to fall into desuetude, and the wealthy were keeping their own flesh and blood in perpetual bondage. The resolution to enfranchise was taken with great solemnity: there was a meeting in the Temple, with the king at the head of his people; in accordance with an ancient custom an animal was slaughtered, and those who were entering into the agreement, or “covenant,” as they called it, passed between the pieces of the divided carcase, the meaning of this symbolic action being, “Such be the fate of him who breaks this covenant.” Yet when, soon after, through the departure of the Babylonian army to meet an Egyptian force which had appeared on the southern border, the danger seemed to be at an end, they recalled their action and reasserted their rights over their servants. Anything more cynically defiant of both the honour due to God and the rights of man, it would be impossible to conceive; and Jeremiah indignantly spoke out his mind about it, declaring that those who would not allow their brethren to be delivered were themselves delivered over to sword, famine, and pestilence.
Dear friends and brethren, in all your words, in all your business and employment, have a care of breaking your words and promises to any people; but that you may consider beforehand, whether you may be able to perform and fulfil both your words and promises, that your yea be yea, and nay, nay in all things; which Christ hath set up instead of an oath and swearing.1 [Note: George Fox, Works, viii. 219.]
Nietzsche would define man as an animal that can make and keep promises. He sees the real nobility of man in his capacity for promising something, answering for himself and undertaking a responsibility-since man, with the mastery of himself which this capacity implies, necessarily acquires in addition a mastery over external circumstances and over other creatures, whose will is not so lasting. The consciousness of this responsibility is what the sovereign man calls his conscience.2 [Note: George Brandes, Friedrich Nietzsche, 32.]
2. No prophetic exhortation could convince them of their sin. No chastisement could bring them to repentance. When judgment fell upon them they would ask, with an air of injured innocence, “Wherefore hath the Lord our God done all these things unto us?” They were incorrigible, and nothing was left but to write Judah's epitaph: “This is the nation that hath not hearkened to the voice of the Lord their God, nor received instruction: truth is perished, and is cut off from their mouth.” Therefore nothing remains but judgment. The city and nation must be swept away. The old order must be destroyed that a new one may arise in its place; death is the only hope of life.
Yet Jeremiah seldom uttered a warning without at the same time showing how the impending danger could be averted. He promised his people deliverance, personal and national, on the simple condition that they returned to their allegiance to Jehovah. He did not, however, often put the terms into this succinct form. He usually dwelt now on one, and now on another, of the various stages of feeling or details of conduct which such a change of relation implied or involved. He saw, for example, that it was necessary for the Jews first of all to recognize the wrongness of their actual bearing and actions. He therefore supplements a declaration that Jehovah is waiting to show mercy to them with the exhortation, “Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith the Lord.” He himself, in his plea for Jerusalem and Judah, confesses their sins: “We acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness and the iniquity of our fathers: for we have sinned against thee.” The recognition of guilt naturally produces penitence. The prophet therefore expects his people to show signs of contrition in view of their offences. He says that he listened in vain for tokens of this sort from Judah: “No man repenteth him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done?” On the other hand, he anticipates the day when Ephraim will say, “Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a calf unaccustomed to the yoke: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God. Surely after that I was turned, I repented; and after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh; I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.”
Repentance works; it affects the active powers; it touches the will. The awakened sinner, finding himself in the path of transgressors, stops, and turns his face towards the way of life. He hears the voice which speaks from heaven, “Break off thy sins by righteousness”; he endeavours to keep the law of God. Pharnaces, while still in revolt against Cæsar, sent to him a golden crown. Cæsar sternly refused the gift. “Let Pharnaces,” said he, “return to his obedience.” The war between the Northern and Southern States of America was not ended until General Lee laid his sword down on the grass at General Grant's feet, in the orchard at Appomattox, saying, as he looked up to the banner of the stars and stripes floating overhead, “We will never take up arms against the old flag again.” And the long controversy between the soul and God cannot be brought to a termination until the soul, subdued and penitent, exclaim, “I have sinned and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not.” “You say that you have come to Christ,” says Bunyan; “then, tell me what have you come from?”
Repentance, if it be true, seeks also to repair the wrong done, to undo the past, to make restitution, to “cut off the entail of sin.” Claud Harms, contrasting the penitential exercises of the Middle Ages with the easy indifference to wrong-doing displayed by many in his time, says somewhere, almost with bitterness, “In earlier times, at any rate, forgiveness cost something; now men simply forgive themselves.” “Go in peace,” said the Lord to an awakened sinner. Then He added, “Go, and sin no more.”
When the path of repentance is once entered on, the sinner is surprised to find how easy it is, and how pleasant. He thought that it was a perilous ascent to where the storm-winds raged unceasingly; a sharp, cruel road strewn with branching thorns, and filled with stones like knives; a painful progress with bleeding feet and toiling breath. Instead, he finds it a calm and peaceful way. Luther confessed to Staupitz that the word repentance, which he formerly thought the most terrifying word in the Bible, was now the most gracious. And Bengel says, “Repentance is a joyful gift.” The waters of Marah have been sweetened by the tree of healing.1 [Note: D. M. McIntyre, in Foundation Truths of the Gospel, 118.]
3. In his treatment of sin it was Jeremiah's constant effort to reach the individual, to arouse the individual sense of guilt. He continually emphasized the fact that each member of the nation was guilty-that it was just because there was “none righteous, no, not one,” that the whole body of society was regarded as guilty before the Lord. “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven.” “Ye have done evil more than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the stubbornness of his evil heart, so that ye hearken not unto me.” It was because all had sinned, all were guilty, that no hope for Jerusalem remained. Sometimes Jeremiah probes more deeply into the very nature of sin. He shows how firmly it is rooted in the human heart: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good that are accustomed to do evil.” And yet the blame must not be laid at the door of God, the Author of human nature; for this corruption is simply the result of long habit: “They have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves to commit iniquity. Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the Lord.” And so Jeremiah cries aloud the great truth that he has discovered in his own life: “I the Lord search the heart … even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” It was in reality the death-blow to the whole doctrine of national religion, national responsibility, and it contained the promise of something far higher and more spiritual. The well-known proverb was become a lie, and Jeremiah proclaimed the lie aloud: “In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.”
The earlier prophets had laid down the essential principles of religion, had made religion a matter of ethics, of holy love, and of moral faith, and had no doubt exemplified these qualities in their own private life. But they did not apparently look upon their own experience of religion as sufficiently important to he worthy of a place in their recorded utterances. Religion with them seems to have been primarily a national affair. It was Jeremiah who first gave to it the personal note. It was he who first made the soul of the individual the true seat of religion. But this does not mean that he gave up the national point of view. Through all his ministry he continued to address himself to the nation as such. It simply means that he made the conception of religion deeper and more inward. He made its essential nature consist in personal fellowship with God. This implies the ascription of new importance to the individual. It also implies that true religion is not a matter of race, but is as broad as humanity itself. But Jeremiah does not specially concern himself with these implications. He leaves them to be worked out by his two great successors. What he is himself specially interested in is the actual, vital experience of God. And this he finds in himself, in his own soul. He, as Duhm says, “first discovered the soul and its significance for religion.”
Forty years afterwards, Augustin, in his Confessions, pondered this slight ordinary fact of his birth, which happened almost unnoticed by the inhabitants of Thagaste, and in truth it seems to him a great event, not because it concerns himself, bishop and Father of the Church, but because it is a soul which at this imperceptible point of time comes into the world.
Let me clearly understand Augustin's thought. Souls have been ransomed by a Victim of infinite value. They have themselves an infinite value. Nothing which goes on in them can be ignored. Their most trifling sins, their feeblest stirrings towards virtue, are vital for the eternity of their lot. All shall be attributed to them by the just Judge. The theft of an apple will weigh perhaps as heavily in the scales as the seizure of a province or a kingdom. The evil of sin is in the evil intention. Now the fate of a soul, created by God, on Him depends. Hence everything in a human life assumes an extreme seriousness and importance. In the history of a creature, all is worthy of being examined, weighed, studied, and perhaps also, for the edification of others, told.1 [Note: L. Bertrand, Saint Augustin, 31.]